I’ve been busy lately eating kale chips. I’m so in love with dehydrated kale these days. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE just plain old raw kale marinated in olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt. But, dehydrated kale chips are great for crunch and of course a quick salt fix.

Nutritional Yeast is another one of my favorite things when it comes to making raw cheese-like comfort foods. In the world of raw foods nutritional yeast is added to dishes in order to give them a rich “cheesy” flavor. To do this I usually mix lemon, sea salt and nutritional yeast (water if making a cheese sauce). Normally I will also add a red bell pepper and cashews. Then this mixture goes into a Vitamix or a Cuisinart until smooth.

Nutritional Yeast can also be added to a “cracker” recipe in order to give it a cheesy flavor as well.

Nutritional Yeast is not to be confused with Brewer’s Yeast. Both are great sources of B12 (important for Vegans) but Brewer’s Yeast doesn’t give the cheesy flavor that Nutritional Yeast does.
So be sure not to confuse the two.

Another trick to making raw comfort foods is adding heat like jalapenos and/or ginger and/or garlic. This can give off the illusion that the dish is actually cooked or “hot”. It’s a great option when making soups and pates. Or when it’s cold outside. You can actually work up a sweat from combining all of the above spicy items.

For the Kale:

2 heads of kale, washed and dried (remove middle hard stem if desire)

1/4 cup soft dates

3 Tbls olive oil

1 tsp sea salt

For the Raw Spicy Cashew Cheese:

1.5 red bell pepper

1 Tbls nutritional yeast

2 lemons, juiced

1/2 jalapeno

1 cups soaked cashews

1 Tbls sea salt {or less or to taste}

Instructions:
1. First, coat the kale olive oil and sea salt {you can skip this step if you’d like, it’s not necessary}
2. Mix the “sauce” ingredients in a vitamix until SUPER creamy.
3. Pour the sauce over the kale {coat the kale, but leave some of it in blobs}.
4. Last, dehydrate for 12-18 hours on a mesh tray {you can double the mesh trays if you think that the mixture is too watery/messy. Or until SUPER duper crunch {not soft}
ENJOY – the chips should look like the photo when finished.